The founder was Joseph Benjamin Rawlins (1828-1895), who was the son of Francis and Hannah Rawlins.  Francis was a journeyman cutler, who lived at Pye Bank in 1841.  However, he died in June 1850, aged 59 (when he was a warehouseman, according to the burial register of the parish church).  By 1851, Joseph was a scissors filer and living with his widowed mother in Nursery Street.  In 1859, he launched a business as a dressing-case instrument maker.  His works address initially was the same as his home: Prospect Terrace, Steel Bank.  In about 1870, he moved his business to Union Lane and took his family to Hope Cottage, 121 Harvey Clough Road, Norton Woodseats.  His business was later conducted at Hope Works, which was a small factory at 137 Harvey Clough Road.  It was a simple rectangular brick building of three storeys, at right angles to the road, with a small extension, and a single-storey brick workshop across the yard (Bayliss, 1985).  At its peak, the factory employed up to thirty workers. 

The founder died on 25 February 1895, aged 67.  He was buried in Norton cemetery,  leaving £1,364.  The company was continued by his eldest son, Francis William Rawlins (1854-1907).  After his death on 6 November 1907 (leaving £2,777), his widow, Clara Stott Rawlins, maintained the family interest.  She died on 29 April 1918, aged 61, leaving £3,622.   Ownership of the business passed to George Harry Hawksworth (1878-1944), who in 1911 was working as a clerk at a dressing case instrument manufacturer (presumably Rawlins’).  In 1919, he was listed in a Sheffield directory as a manager.  Hawksworth later described himself as a ‘manicure file manufacturer’ (Register of England & Wales, 1939).  He died on 3 July 1944, leaving £10,826, and was cremated at City Road. 

Hawksworth had guided Rawlins’ through the difficult interwar years.  In 1951, it became a limited company as a manufacturer of scissors, manicure instruments, and advertising novelties.  Hope Works was now in the hands of George H.  Hawksworth’s son, George John ‘Jack’ Hawksworth (1908-1981).   By 1973, he been at the firm for fifty years.  He remembered as boy collecting horse manure to put under the anvils as a cushion to prevent the forgers from injuring their wrists.  He died on 23 September 1981, aged 73, leaving £45,482.  In 1984, Hope Works was demolished.